The present invention relates to an ultrasonic imaging apparatus and, more particularly, to an ultrasonic imaging apparatus capable of measuring the amount of a fluid flowing in an object under examination.
An electronic scanning type ultrasonic transducer comprises an array of a plurality of ultrasonic transducer elements. When a subject having a blood vessel is scanned by the ultrasonic transducer, Doppler information and section-area information of the blood vessel can be obtained. The amount of blood flow in the subject is measured from this information.
When the amount of blood flow is to be measured using a conventional one-dimensional array type ultrasonic transducer, first, the ultrasonic transducer scans a longitudinal section-area of a blood vessel in order to obtain a Doppler signal, and then a cross-section of the blood vessel to obtain the sectional area of the blood vessel. When the scanning direction is to be switched from the longitudinal direction to the cross-section, it is required to change the location of the ultrasonic transducer. In this case, the positions where the Doppler signal and the section-area information are obtained are undesirably displaced, and an error occurs in the amount of blood flow obtained from the Doppler information and the section-area information.